Ben Carson Calls Into Question CDC Secrecy Over Ebola Testing

Neurologist and author of “One Nation,” Dr. Ben Carson said that the Centers for Disease Control should keep the need to balance patient privacy and the public’s need to know in mind when it comes to the Ebola virus.

“Certainly I’m a strong proponent of privacy of health care information,” Carson said on Wednesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Your World.’ “But you can certainly reveal that a patient has been tested and is negative to allay hysteria because when you have a situation where you’re acting if a secretive manner, people have a tendency to assume the worst. So you have to be smart enough to weigh one thing against the other. You can’t just sort of have blinders on and say ‘privacy, privacy, privacy’ and there’s a riot going on outside. So, that’s where wisdom comes in.”

Carson also defended his earlier position that American doctors who contracted Ebola should not have been brought to the US, arguing “our policies should be directed against [the] worst-case scenario, not [the] best-case scenario when we’re talking about the health and well-being of the population of the United States.” He also stated he “would recommend to everybody that they gain some basic knowledge of Ebola. Do a little bit of reading. You’ll discover this is a virus that generally is transmitted in bodily liquids.”